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Lots of people who haven’t actually managed a blog have no idea what happens on the back end.
But if you are like me and you take care of content creation and blog management, you probably know how stressful it can become.
I mean, it’s actually got to a point where I had to schedule blog management into my weekly planner because it’s something that you might end up forgetting, especially when you are also the content creator.
And I don’t know about others, but content creation—creating content for the blog itself and for social media promotion—is one hell of a task that requires your utmost focus.
So it’s completely natural that you might end up forgetting to carry out certain tasks to take care of your blog from the back end.
I know we are all pressed for time, especially since there are many things pulling our attention, and in this post, I’ve written down some simple blog management tasks you can do within 20 minutes.
Depending on how fast you work, you might even end up doing every single thing on this list in less than an hour.
Remember that you do need to be careful so that you don’t end up deleting your hard work or messing up your blog.
I also want to mention that since the CMS I use is WordPress, and I am not really aware of the options available on other CMS platforms.
I did read a few other articles and generally think they are sort of the same, so any of these tips will apply regardless of your content management system.
1. Update Plugins and Themes
One simple thing you can do to manage your blog properly is to check for and install any updates to your blog’s plugins or theme.
Plugin and theme developers usually release new major updates every other month, but there are also little security and bug fixes from time to time, so you want to make sure you’re on top of that.
This might not seem like much, but I believe you wouldn’t like a situation where your back end is compromised and your blog is hacked or worse.
This is very simple to do, at least in WordPress, because you can either select that all plugins and themes should be updated automatically or do it yourself.
I wouldn’t advise you to set your plugins and themes to update automatically because sometimes an update ends up being rolled back due to reports of it breaking people’s sites.
So, make sure you give it some time and check out the reviews before you go ahead and update.
2. Review Comments
It’s generally advised that you leave your comments option on because it encourages engagement on the website, but this has a downside as well.
The primary disadvantage is that you might fall victim to spammers invading your site, so you want to make sure that you are covered on that end.
Firstly, install a plugin like Akismet that automatically filters out spam comments, and you could even leave custom instructions for comments with links or certain phrases to be immediately discarded.
Another easy thing you can do is to change your settings so that comments don’t go live on the blog immediately but must be vetted by an administrator before they appear on the website.
You can take 5 minutes every day to look through the list of comments that have been flagged by your spam detector, discuss the ones you are sure are spam, and leave the ones that you believe are genuine.
Once you are left with the comments you believe are genuine, take another 5 minutes to reply to them and let them know you are grateful for their time and engagement.
Unlike many other niches, the book niche thrives on the strength of community, and there’s no better way to build community than engaging in healthy discourse with other bloggers.
3. Fix Typos
If you have some free time during the day, you can take a few minutes to look through your headings, meta descriptions, and the post itself to find typographical errors.
This can be made easier if you are using your desktop and have a plugin like ProWritingAid or Grammarly installed on the browser, as these plugins automatically highlight grammatical errors.
The image you want to project to your readers is that of a person who takes their time to research before writing, and even though the language you write in may not be your native language, try to correct any errors you catch.
This is something I take time to do almost every day, and trust me, I might look at an article 30 times, but the minute I hit publish, that’s when I start to see the glaring grammatical errors.
You will not be physically punished for making a typo, but to show your expertise and build trust with your readers, you definitely want to make sure you’re putting your best foot forward.
Also See: 50+ Unique Post Ideas For Book Bloggers So You Never Run Out of New Content
4. Update Content Headings & Meta Descriptions
Google, as well as other search engines, loves fresh content, especially content that is arranged in a way that readers can easily decipher the intent and content of the page.
If this sounds like something you struggle with, the first step is to check out your headings and meta descriptions and update them to match the article.
Remember that your headings, meta descriptions, and the keywords you have strategically placed in the article will determine how far you go in blog visibility, so you need to be very careful about this.
Like many other bloggers, I also started with little to no knowledge of SEO, but when I started learning more, it took me a while to get through my backlog of published posts, updating the headings, meta descriptions, and the articles themselves.
When you refresh your content this way, it’s preferable if your theme has an option to display the last updated date, but if it doesn’t, feel free to republish it on the day you are making the changes.
5. Check Affiliate Links
This applies if you use affiliate links in your posts, and it’s very important because you don’t want to miss out on any additional income due to a broken link.
It might be tedious to go through this manually, especially when you have more than 20 blog posts, so check out the plugin store and download a plugin that might help.
Lasso is a premium plugin that automatically checks every single affiliate link on the site and presents a report on its dashboard showing the links that do not lead to a relevant page.
If you really want to go all the way, you can also get a plugin that automatically checks and signals if a product you’ve linked to is now out of stock, so you know whether to link to other products as well.
6. Clear Cache
Something funny happened when I was running my old blog: I made changes to the theme but totally forgot that the cache hadn’t been cleared, so some pages had one theme and some had a totally different theme.
If you make sweeping changes to your blog, you really want to make sure that you clear your cache because this can affect the way content is rendered.
The worst thing you can do is leave your readers with a bad impression of your site.
Caching is usually done to speed up the site, which is good, but you can also set it to clear every 30 days or so.
If you make changes yourself, remember to clear the cache.
7. Backup the Blog
This hasn’t happened to me yet, but I have definitely heard many horror stories of publishers making an error and ending up deleting all the posts on their site.
You can prevent this by backing up the content—posts, pages, media, and whatever—at least once a week and making sure to retain draft copies of your articles in off-blog storage.
There are plugins like Updraft that are specifically for backing up, but in my case, I back up my site through Hostinger, which is done automatically every day.
Read More: How To Write Blog Articles Faster & 10 Easy Tips To Get Started
8. Audit User Roles
Another super simple blog management task is to review and adjust user permissions if needed, especially if you have added authors or administrators to manage the site from the back end.
As the administrator of a site, you can designate roles to any new user, and whatever permissions you give them are the only things reflected on their dashboard when they log in.
If you have people on your team who have access to the back end of your site, periodically review their permissions and roles to ensure no one unintentionally causes harm to a particular part of your blog.
9. Schedule Posts for Your Social Media Channels
The number of posts you can schedule for your social media channels depends on the time you have.
But in 20 minutes, you can publish two pins to Pinterest, schedule three Facebook posts for the entire day, and post one reel on Instagram.
10. Outline a New Blog Post
I don’t know about other people, but my ideas come at the most random times. Sometimes I need to research, and you can do your blog research in less than 5 minutes.
To do this, simply open up your competitors’ blogs—assuming you have already identified them—and check out their recently published posts.
When writing down your ideas, remember to put a unique spin on them so that it doesn’t just look like you’re copying content from other sites.
11. Check Analytics
Another super simple and easy thing you can do to maintain your blog in less than 30 minutes is to check your analytics to measure your performance.
This isn’t a full dive-in because there’s still time for that in the future, but rather a casual glance to see your best and least performing posts, as this will help if you decide to update them.
12. Check for Dead Widgets
Try as we might, we can’t keep track of everything, and sometimes a widget simply becomes redundant and ends up taking up white space on the page.
If you’ve got 2 minutes to spare, log into your dashboard and delete the widget quickly, then go about your day.
This helps protect your blog from potential security risks and ensures that your readers get the best experience.
13. Update Your Contact Information
Since it’s recommended that every blog provide a contact form (because you might be contacted for sponsored posts or by a delighted reader reaching out), make sure that the contact options on the page are up-to-date.
This means swapping out a non-functioning email for an active email you can access and use to contact people and ensuring that any social media handles provided are linked properly.
Pin This For Later!
One common thing you will hear in any blogging community, especially from people who don’t really know what they are saying, is that blogging is very passive.
As a blogger who has handled more than three blogs in the last decade, I can say that this is the biggest lie ever.
Being a blogger means wearing many hats, especially if you are in charge of every single area of your blog.
The worst thing you can do to your blog is to totally abandon it after publishing your content, thinking that it’s a passive venture.
In reality, you need to be regularly on hand to create and promote content and to ensure that everything is working on the back end.
There have been loads of updates on social media platforms and search engines in the past 12 months alone, and you definitely need to stay on top of things to avoid falling behind.
The items I listed above are just some of the very simple things you can do to take care of your blog, and they won’t take up a lot of your time.
I’m currently juggling school, work, and this blog, so I know the importance of having small pockets of time when I can quickly manage tasks for the blog. If you’re like me, these are some things you could add to your daily schedule.
